1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a test interface card, and more particularly, to a test interface card capable of enabling a test host without hot plug function to perform a hot plug function, and also avoid turning off the test host each time when an audio-video device is required to be tested.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, the household entertainment electronic appliances, such as VCD, DVD, stereo system, are gradually being replaced by computer systems due to rapid development of computer technology. Accordingly, a desktop computer may provide visional and sound entertainment to users. The computer could function as both TV set and stereo system with quality comparable to common household electronic appliances. For watching TV via computer, the computer should be equipped with audio-video device, for example, TV card or TV box, for receiving TV signal. Thus, audio-video device is very essential for computer to function as TV.
Nowadays, peripheral component interconnection (PCI) interface is widely used; the latest audio-video devices mostly use the PCI interface to communicate with the host. For proper functioning of the computer product, a test is usually performed in order to ensure the quality of the audio-video device. Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, the conventional testing method of the audio-video device A comprises: shutting down the host B; plugging the PCI Bus A1 of the audio-video device A into the PCI slot B1 of the host B; and turning on the host B; for executing the test on the audio-video device A. After the completion of the test, the audio-video device A may be unplugged from the host B.
However, the conventional test procedure described above has several defects described as follows.
1. Because the PCI interface does not contain hot plug function, which is adopted for supporting the host B for enabling the host B to accept or release the interface card without the need of turning off the power, therefore the host B must be shut down before plugging-in or unplugging the audio-video device A. Thus, the time and the cost for running the test are accordingly increased.
2. The conventional host B inquires an additional circuit for supporting the PCI interface with the hot plug function, which is present in only the higher level server contents computer host with hot plug function. However, the cost of the higher level server is much higher compared to the common personal computer.
Therefore, how to produce a low cost host without hot plug function to perform a hot plug function is an important issue for the manufacturers in the field.